Learn Your Way

A science-backed guide to discovering how your unique brain learns, and how to harness that knowledge to make learning easier, more effective...and fun.

Advice about how to learn often assumes that what works for one person will work for everyone. But cognitive neuroscientist Chantel Prat knows that no two brains are the same...so no two brains learn in quite the same way.

In Learn Your Way, she draws on more than twenty-five years of research, including her own landmark studies, to teach you how understanding your own brain can help you work with it. Through stories of learners of every age and hands-on “mesearch” exercises, she helps you discover what can actually work for you. Are you more of a carrot- or a stick-learner, for instance? Knowing how your brain responds to success and setbacks can change way you approach a goal, and what type of feedback you learn best from.

Prat then turns to the obstacles that can make achieving that goal difficult—and shows you ways to overcome them, like:

- Cultivate curiosity. When you have to learn something that seems boring, connect it to what you love. Bored by coding but obsessed with Taylor Swift? Build an app about Taylor!

- Embrace mistakes. Fear of getting it wrong can keep you stuck in place. Prat shows you how to create the right conditions to give something a go, whether you’re learning a language, an instrument, or a new physical skill.

- Work with pressure. Why do skills that come easily in practice sometimes falter when the stakes are high? Learn to recognize what throws you off and choose the right strategy.

Whether you’re learning for yourself or helping someone else—as a parent, teacher, or coach—Learn Your Way will change how you understand the brain you’re working with and open up new possibilities for growth at every stage of life.